207SHINOHARA Manabu and KIKUCHI Takashi

1 Introduction

On Oct. 24, 2003, a power failure experi-enced by the Midori II Advanced Earth Obser-vation Satellite II (ADEOS-II) shortly afterthe arrival of shock waves created by a solarwind caused a complete shutdown of the satel-lite’s functions. Then, on Oct. 28, the third-largest solar flare on record as of that dateoccurred on the surface of the Sun, and abnor-mal signals were reported in the solar sensorsof the KODAMA Data Relay Test Satellite(DRTS). In the days that followed, strong (andrecord-breaking) disturbances were observedin the solar terrestrial environment, includingthe fifth-largest solar proton event (corre-sponding to an immense increase in solar radi-ation) and the fifth-largest geomagnetic stormrecorded as of that date. With the developmentof the geomagnetic storm, auroral activitiesspread to extremely low-latitude regionsaround the world, and in Japan, low-latitude

auroras were observed widely in the Hokkaidoand central Honshu regions.

These events led to extensive reports in thenewspapers and elsewhere on space-weatherdisturbances, and the Space Weather Groupwas inundated with requests for informationboth from the media and the public.

Up to that time, the Space Weather Groupof the National Institute of Information andCommunications Technology (NICT; previ-ously the Communications Research Labora-tory, or CRL) had released information on thesolar terrestrial environment by telephone, fax,e-mail, and on our website. However, the con-tent was generally aimed at specialists andwas difficult to comprehend for the generalreader. This enormous disturbance raised ourawareness of the need to expand our targets ofinformation to include the general public,leading us to create a new website, the “SpaceWeather News”.

Space Weather News on the Web atNICTSHINOHARA Manabu and KIKUCHI Takashi

Extremely fast CME was ejected by the solar flare in October 2003, and caused space envi-ronment disturbances. Low latitude aurora was observed in the northern part of Japan. Thesespace storms and accidents on Japanese satellites were reported on TV news and newspapers.In order to inform public people of the space storms and hazards on the satellite system, thespace weather group of the NICT started to issue the Space Weather News(http://swnews.nict.go.jp/) on October 29, 2003. The space weather news has been publishedeveryday for one year and ten months. The total access count has reached about 500,000 inAugust 2005. The average daily access count is about 1,050 in the last three months. Thespace weather news is accessed by researchers and professionals in space science and tech-nology as well as by the public.

KeywordsSpace weather, Web publishing, Geomagnetic storm, Solar flare

208 Journal of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology Vol.52 Nos.3/4 2005

2 Policies of the space weathernews publication

The Space Weather News was foundedbased on the following policies.• Provision of information to those in the gen-

eral public with no professional knowledge• Use of simple expressions and eye-catching

images• Daily issuance and prompt updates in the

event of large-scale events, through “newsflashes”

• Presentation of information on space weatherand instructions on viewing the data tofamiliarize readers with the subject

The first step in creating such a websiteinvolved determining the level of understand-ing when assuming a general public audience.If the target readership is too broad and thewebsite rendered comprehensible to anyone,we will find ourselves unable to use almostany technical terms, inhibiting the effectiverelay of information. Therefore, we decided totarget readers with some interest in spaceweather and who are willing to learn the tech-nical terms they may find initially difficult tounderstand.

In many cases, disturbances in spaceweather are sudden events, with long stretchesof quiet periods. Therefore, if articles were tobe written only on disturbances, updateswould be sporadic and could confuse readersas to how frequently the site is in fact revised.We believe that with daily updates—even onminor matters—readers will be encouraged tovisit the site every day. We have thereforedecided to issue the news on a daily basis. Infact, quiet periods can be viewed as consistingof events leading up to the next disturbance,and our policy to release information dailyultimately proved a significant means of pre-dicting future developments and large-scalespace weather events, based on data gatheredduring such periods.

The primary purpose of the Space WeatherNews is to increase the number of peoplefamiliar with space weather phenomena.Therefore, efforts must be aimed at attracting

reader interest and stimulating the desire tolearn more. Thus, we believe it is important toprovide not only current space weather infor-mation, but also to provide the backgroundinformation that will help the reader under-stand current conditions, such as the detailsand causes of a given event and future predic-tions. Detailed explanations could easilybecome too extensive and bog the writerdown, but we nevertheless plan to provide asmuch information as possible, so that ourreaders will ultimately find themselves know-ing a great deal about space weather simply byvirtue of reading our news over a period oftime. On the other hand, we also plan to makethe website visually pleasing, offering stun-ning photo and video images of the Sun andauroras, rendering the site attractive to readerswho do not necessarily understand all of thecontent—readers who, we believe, also forman important element of our readership.

3 Space weather news content

The Space Weather News covers informa-tion on the overall environment from the Sunto the Earth. Figure 1 is an example of a pagefrom the news. The page is split vertically,with the narrow left-hand and the wide right-hand margins providing information and gen-eral PR items, respectively. The wide right-hand column first presents a summary of thespace weather for the day, and then offersplots of observation data and images providedby various organizations. News updates aremade semi-automatically using a PC and sothe page design will generally remainunchanged; this is necessary to provide a man-ageable workload for the writers who preparethe news. The narrow left-hand column pro-vides tables on the latest space weather data,the results of auto-analysis, and links to usefulsites that will help the reader gain a greaterunderstanding of space weather.

Articles can generally be grouped intothose dealing with the Sun, with solar winds,and with the magnetosphere.

Information on the Sun includes changes

209SHINOHARA Manabu and KIKUCHI Takashi

in sunspot groups, occurrences of solar flares,occurrences of CME (coronal mass ejection),and distribution of coronal holes, as well asthe results of analysis of these phenomena.

The flow of plasma released by the Sun isreferred to as the solar wind, and the velocityof the solar wind and characteristics of theaccompanying magnetic field control theamount of electromagnetic energy that entersthe magnetosphere. This in turn affects theactivities in the magnetosphere of the Earth.Data from solar wind observation satellites isused to determine the characteristics of thesolar winds and to predict the effects of thesewinds on the Earth’s magnetosphere. In theevent of sudden occurrences such as CMEs,judgments are made on the possibility ofeffects to the Earth, as well as estimations onthe arrival time of the high-velocity solarwind. Since the rotational period of the Sun is27 days, regular ejections of high-velocitysolar winds by coronal holes tend to recur in27-day cycles, and this characteristic is usedin discussing short-term (e.g., weekly) predic-tions.

Information on the Earth’s magnetosphereincludes assessments of the occurrence anddevelopment of auroras and geomagneticstorms. Events that are likely to affect theoperation of satellites are also reported,including changes in the high-energy electrondensity of the radiation belt and solar protonevents associated with strong solar flares.

An abundance of attractive photo andvideo images are also presented to draw in thegeneral reader, including photos of solar flaresand CME gas ejections taken by various solarobservation satellites (SOHO, GOES) as wellas photos of auroras taken by NICT’s AlaskaProject team and auroral observation satellites.When low-latitude auroras were observed, wealso presented photos contributed by readers.We have been told that a planetarium at a sci-ence museum in Shikoku prints out the SpaceWeather News every day as a part of its gener-al exhibition, to increase space weather aware-ness among visitors during the summer vaca-tion. We believe that attractive images incor-porated in the news will have strong appealamong visitors in these and similar efforts.

Fig.1 Page from Space Weather News,issued on Sept. 1, 2005.Data provided by ESA & NASA for SOHOand NOAA/SEC for ACE

210 Journal of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology Vol.52 Nos.3/4 2005

4 Hits to date

Publication of the Space Weather Newsbegan on Oct. 29, 2003. At the time, solaractivities and magnetospheric activities wereextremely strong and the site had to be updat-ed frequently. Space weather conditionscalmed down eventually, and since then,updates have generally been made once a day.From inception to Aug. 21, 2005 (663 days),665 news articles were issued, with a total of488,739 hits. The average number of hits forthe three-month period from May to August2005 stood at 1,046 per day. The cumulativetotal is expected to exceed 500,000 by the endof Aug. 2005.

4.1 Trends in website access Figure 2 shows the growth in the number

of viewers accessing the site. The horizontalaxis shows the months from Nov. 2003, thestart of publication, to Sept. 2005. Since thegraph shows the cumulative total, the plot isbasically an upward-sloping curve. However,it can be seen that the slope graduallybecomes steeper with time, indicating anincrease in the daily number of hits. Severaljumps are observed in the curve, indicatingconcentrated access within short periodsattributable to large-scale space weather dis-

turbances.Figure 3(b) shows the change in the daily

number of hits. During the half-year periodfrom inception to July 2004, this daily numberremained between 300–500. The number ofhits then increased dramatically within a shortperiod at the time indicated by the arrow in thegraph. This corresponds to a period of signifi-cant increases in solar flare activity, whichcaused large space weather disturbances suchas geomagnetic storms and low-latitude auro-ras.

Figure 3(a) shows variations in the Dstindex, one of the indicators representing thecharacteristics of the Earth’s magnetosphere,with values corresponding to the strength ofthe ring current flowing around the Earth.Negative-trending changes in values of theDst index indicate the development of a geo-magnetic storm, and a significant decrease inthe Dst plot indicates the occurrence of alarge-scale geomagnetic storm. The arrows inFig. 3 indicate significant negative changes inDst values, all of which correspond to large-scale space weather disturbances.

The occurrence of these large-scale distur-bances resulted in a sudden increase in hitsdue to more frequent visits by regular readersand also due to an influx of new readers whowere introduced to our Space Weather News

Fig.2 Cumulative total number of hits for Space Weather News

211SHINOHARA Manabu and KIKUCHI Takashi

site on the web. It was particularly noted that amention of our site in the online media resultsin an explosive jump in the number of hits. InNov. 2003, there were 23,000 hits to the siteconcentrated within a two-day period, and inJan. 2005, the number of concentrated hitstotaled 14,000 for another two-day period.Although the sudden increase in user accessfalls off as a disturbance dies down, it appearsthat a portion of new visitors stay on tobecome regular readers, as indicated by theincrease in average number of hits after thepoints indicated by the arrows.

In the final three-month period shown inFig. 3(b), we see approximately 1,050 hits perday, a value 2.5 times greater than that seen atthe outset.

4.2 Trends in regular accessFigure 4 shows the average number of hits

per hour for each day based on data collectedfor 91 days from May 22 to Aug. 20, 2005.The hits are distributed fairly evenly between8 a.m. and midnight. We see 60 hits per

hour—thus, one visitor per minute. The gener-al increase between noon and 1 p.m. is mostlikely due to lunchtime visitors. The numberof hits falls significantly at night, and the qui-etest periods occur in the three-hour periodbetween 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. However, accesscontinues to some degree even in the latenight and early morning hours.

Figure 5 shows the average number of hitsper day on a weekly basis. The gathered data

Fig.3 Dst index (a) and number of hits per day to the Space Weather News (b)

Fig.4 Average number of hits per hour foreach day

212 Journal of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology Vol.52 Nos.3/4 2005

corresponds to the same time period as indi-cated in Fig. 4. There is a clear difference inthe number of hits on weekdays and on week-ends, with user access increasing by approxi-mately 20% during the week, and an averageof 1,070 and 820 hits on weekdays and week-ends, respectively. There are no apparent dif-ferences in the number of hits among week-days or between Saturdays and Sundays.

5 Readership

We have analyzed our readership based onthe access log. Based on domain names, thevisits were traced and largely categorized ascoming from:• Educational institutions• Government and research organizations• Private businesses• Provider companies

These categories include groups that arebelieved to be directly associated with spaceweather fields as well as those that have nodirect connection to these areas.

Provider company access is believed toconsist mainly of visits from general house-hold users, leading us to conclude that wehave been successful in our initial aim ofestablishing a body of general readers whoread the Space Weather News out of personalinterest.

Universities and technical colleges arefound among the records of access by educa-

tional institutions. There is almost no accessfrom high schools and below, but this may bedue to the fact that these institutions do notappear separately as they generally do notmake use of independent domains.

Organizations that are deeply involved inspace-related activities, such as those operat-ing satellites, largely form the group of gov-ernmental and research organizations access-ing the site. Particularly, we see a number oforganizations associated with GPS manage-ment.

Companies involved in satellite opera-tions, broadcasting, electric power supply, andelectronics form the bulk of private-businessaccess. We believe that in many of these cases,the information provided is in fact essential inthe business operations of these companies.

Although the Space Weather News waslaunched to increase public interest in spaceweather, it seems that we have also gained thesupport of those who require such informationin the course of their business activities,exceeding our initial audience expectations.By focusing site content on explanations ofspace weather phenomena, we may have suc-ceeded in establishing a truly balanced site,providing information both for amateurs andprofessionals (the latter of which had, beforethis project, been served primarily by theSpace Weather Group).

6 Evaluation as a website

Websites that exist in a vacuum never suc-ceed in gaining a wide audience, and so effortsmust be made to increase readership throughlinks with various websites and search-enginehits.

Two surveys have been conducted to eval-uate the success of the Space Weather Newswebsite throughout the world. The first con-sisted of a survey on the types of websites thatlinked to our site, and the second surveylooked at our page ranking in search resultsusing several key terms on engines such asGoogle. Since links between sites are essentialin website promotion, it is believed that the

Fig.5 Average number of hits per day ona weekly basis

213SHINOHARA Manabu and KIKUCHI Takashi

results of these two surveys can provide someindication of external evaluations of our site.

Based on a variety of data on pages withlinks to our site, we found two types oflinks—one in which links are presented onpages directly associated with space weatheras part of their business activities, and oneconsisting of links from sites indicating oursas a target of personal interest.

Examples of linked sites that regard ourinformation as commercially useful include:• Those introducing the characteristics of

shortwave broadcasting hazards• Those cautioning visitors on increased posi-

tioning errors in GPS• Those introducing our site as reference

source for news related to space weather inthe web media

Shortwave broadcasting is directly affect-ed by space weather conditions such as ionos-pheric disturbances. Although we had beenaware of GPS vulnerability to ionospheric dis-turbances, we did not expect that those man-aging such systems took space weather condi-tions into consideration on the applicationlevel. This is one case in which we learnedsomething new from our users about the dis-semination of space weather information. Wehave concluded that mentions of our site inweb media were significantly enhanced by ourtargeting of content to the general reader.

The links from individual-user websitescan be further divided into the categoriesbelow.• those interested in auroras• ham radio operators• those generally interested in space-related

topics• those interested in earthquake prediction and

similar usesThe number of people interested in auroras

is on the rise due to an increase in participantsof “aurora viewing tours” in Canada and Alas-ka, and in fact this number appears to be quitesignificant. These people, who are interestedin the live aurora camera under the NICTAlaska Project, are probably highly interestedin the pages of website dealing with auroras.

The first three groups were to be expected,but the fourth came as a complete surprise.Based on an assessment of these websites, itappears that space weather conditions areviewed as necessary data in assessing theoccurrence of a variety of natural phenomena.Some of these sites focus directly on spaceweather disturbances, while others view theseas factors that must be taken into considera-tion in light of their effects on the observationof other phenomena. Along with the exampleof the use of space weather data in GPS opera-tion, the fourth case proves that such use is notnecessarily limited to the applications weanticipated. The lesson we have drawn here isthat the active dissemination of informationcan lead us to attract unexpected new groupsof users.

The order of relevance in the search-engine results was investigated using Google,presently the most popular such engine. Thefollowing words were used in association withthe phrase “Space Weather News” (in Japan-ese).

“Space weather”: 01st“Space”: 31st“Weather”: 39th“News”: 96th“Space” and “weather”: 04th“Space” and “news”: 04thThese search results were obtained on

Aug. 21, 2005.Our Space Weather News site is at the top

of the search results for “space weather”, indi-cating that our site is the most significant inrelevance among the websites for this phrase.A search using such general terms as “space”,“weather”, or “news” also produces results inwhich our site ranks highly in relevance. Inparticular, there are a great number of sitesthat handle “news”, including mainstreammedia sites, but even here we have ranked96th, indicating that Google recognizes oursite as having significant relevance. Our sitealso ranks highly in search results using com-binations of words such as “space” and“news” or “weather” and “news”. Analysis ofour logs shows that some visitors were

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serendipitously guided to Space WeatherNews through search results using such gener-al terms. These fortuitous links may also playa vital role in promoting our site.

7 Use as a reference source

Nearly two years have passed since thelaunch of the Space Weather News site. Sincethen, we have seen numerous active spaceweather disturbances, and though unintended,the regular duties of site operation have led toan accumulation of daily records of suchevents in text and data. The accumulatedmaterial has begun to take on significance as areference source, and its role as a library ofspace weather records is beginning to takeform.

Several presentations on flares and geo-magnetic storms from 2003–2004 given at the2005 Japan Joint Meeting for Earth and Plane-tary Sciences have cited the Space WeatherNews as one of their references. Since figuresand images, with comments for each, are col-lected on a single site on a daily basis, theSpace Weather News now appears to be a use-ful research library. Here we have yet anotherexample of an unanticipated use.

The value of Space Weather News as asource of information will only increase withfuture issues. It goes without saying thataccordingly we must take care in writing themost accurate and concise articles.

8 Conclusions

With the intense space weather distur-bances from Oct.–Nov. 2003, the SpaceWeather Group launched a new site, the“Space Weather News”, providing articles on

space weather for the general reader. Placingpriority on being an interesting read for thenon-professional, the site presents explana-tions of observation data and space weatherpredictions along with stunning images of theSun and auroral events.

In the one year and 10 months since itslaunch to Aug. 2005, we have continued toprovide information on a daily basis and haveachieved a stable readership exceeding 1,000hits per day and a cumulative total of nearly500,000 cases of user access. We can safelyconclude based on the extent of our readershipthat the Space Weather News has succeeded inbecoming a leading page for the disseminationof scientific information.

Progress in space-based initiatives fromsatellites to space stations, the widespread useof satellite technologies such as satellitebroadcasting and GPS, the popularity of“aurora viewing tours”, and the launch ofcommercial space trips (though still extremelyexpensive) have rapidly increased the pres-ence of space weather in the public conscious-ness. The field is presently acknowledged in awide range of media, and we believe thatgrowing number of hits to the Space WeatherNews site provides a clear reflection of thesesocietal trends. Our access records stronglyindicate that space weather information is notonly sought for professional use, but that thereare many in the general population who eitherrequire this information or are simply interest-ed enough to seek it out.

Solar activity follows an 11-year cycle,and so our Space Weather News cannot beregarded as having run a full course until itsfirst 11-year cycle is completed. Thus, ourchief goal at present is to continue publicationthrough 2014.

SHINOHARA Manabu, Dr. Sci.

Research Associate, Kyushu Universityformer: Expert Researcher, SpaceWeather Group, Applied Research andStandards Department

Solar-Terrestrial Physics

KIKUCHI Takashi, Dr. Sci.

Professor, Solar-Terrestrial Environ-ment Laboratory, Nagoya Universityformer: Research Supervisor, AppliedResearch and Standards Department

Solar-Terrestrial Physics